A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace

Ein Sermon von Ablass und Gnade is the short German pamphlet in which Martin Luther explained to ordinary readers what he had argued in Latin in the Ninety-Five Theses the previous autumn. The theses had been written for academic disputation; this sermon, printed in Wittenberg in the spring of 1518, was written for the laypeople who were actually being sold the indulgences Johann Tetzel was preaching in the territories bordering Saxony. It is organized as twenty brief numbered points rather than a continuous homily, and it was reprinted more than twenty times within two years, making it the first of Luther's writings to reach a mass audience.

The argument begins by attacking the scholastic division of penance into contrition, confession, and satisfaction, which Luther says has no grounding in Scripture or the early Fathers. Whatever satisfaction means, it cannot mean paying a price to cancel divine punishment. An indulgence, he argues, can only remit the canonical penalties the church itself has imposed; it has no power over what God requires, and God requires nothing beyond heartfelt sorrow and amendment of life. From this follows the sermon's pastoral core: indulgences are neither commanded nor counseled, no one is obliged to buy them, and a Christian who truly grieves for sin would rather bear the penalty than escape it. Giving money to a poor neighbor is a better work than purchasing a letter of indulgence, and anyone who buys an indulgence instead of helping the needy is not doing a good work but seeking an easy exemption from one. On the question of whether indulgences release souls from purgatory, Luther declines to assert what he cannot prove and leaves the matter to the doctors. He closes by anticipating the charge of heresy from those whose income depends on the trade, and says plainly that he does not care.

The sermon matters because it shows Luther doing something the theses could not: speaking directly to the consciences of people who had been taught that grace could be bought, and insisting that God's pardon owes nothing to the church's fee schedule. It is also a snapshot of a theology in motion. Luther still assumes purgatory, still accepts confession, and still speaks the language of penance; the full doctrine of justification by faith alone is not yet articulated here. What is present is the instinct that would drive everything after it, that nothing stands between the repentant sinner and the mercy of God.

Who should read this: anyone who wants to hear the indulgence controversy in Luther's own plain voice rather than through later summaries, and readers tracing how a pastoral complaint became a reformation. It is not the place to look for Luther's mature teaching on faith and works, and readers expecting a conventional sermon on a biblical text will find a list of theses in the vernacular instead.